Intro and intentions

Hi all. I've been lurking here for a while and have greatly appreciated all the knowledgeable posters on these forums.

I am a complete noob when it comes to the yacht world. The extent of my experience is spending a couple weeks each year on a 60' houseboat in Lake Powell Utah. Obviously, this is a much different experience than coastal yacht cruising.

My wife and I are both still quite young (33 and 26) and have been discussing the idea of doing a 12 month live aboard 2-3 years from now. We were originally talking about traveling and living out of hotels for a year, until the idea of trading hotel life for yacht life entered the conversation after the latest trip to Lake Powell. While we are generally pretty spontaneous, I feel that this is something that will take a significant amount of research and planning. I really wanted to throw out some basic ideas and get some feedback from the gurus here.

I have narrowed things down a bit in my research based on our requirements and what we will be doing. Unfortunately, no sailboats. The idea of sailing is romantic, but for the longer term it just isn't what we are looking to do. So it will be a motor yacht, and I've ruled out catamarans.

We are really leaning toward fly-bridge or tridecks in the 75'-80' range. While a larger yacht would be nice for certain reasons, we really want something that is manageable by ourselves, with the help of my assistant as live-aboard crew.

In terms of style, we seem to gravitate toward Burger and Hatteras. In architecture I always tend to build homes around classic principals and design criteria, and this is no different in the yachting world for me. The difficulty is that we would like to keep the cost of the vessel down to around $1MM, which certainly means something that is around 10-14 years old.

The idea would be to work our way up during the summer months from wherever we purchase the vessel to either Alaska or Eastern Canada, depending on the location of purchase. As it gets colder we would intend on traveling south toward Panama and lock through around February. Then make our way North along the other coast till the summer finds us back in the more northern latitudes. I'd love to hear any criticism, feedback, or encouragement that anyone has for us. I'm in the mode of soaking up knowledge right now.

Regards.

Brett

Great info guys!

So please allow me to ask a few questions.

1) Is my choice of size correct given the following requirements?

Needs to sleep 8 comfortably. Preferably, at least, full beam Master Suite, VIP stateroom, Guest stateroom, reasonably large Captains quarters, crew quarters for two.

Large Galley capable of preparing real meals. My wife is becoming a trained chef, and while she doesn't expect a full gourmet kitchen, certain standards will need to be met.

2) I'm a decent mechanic. I've taken courses within the last 15 years, but I'm a bit out of practice now. I used to operate a handyman business. If I were to spend time during the next couple years refreshing my knowledge and taking applicable courses in piloting large vessels, how long would be a realistic amount of time to expect to need to hire a captain?

Point well taken. I should note that we aren't actually looking at this as a vacation, but rather a different sort of living. So we aren't at all looking to be pampered. I am the type of guy who does things himself, even after building a successful asset management company. I should be "enjoying the lifestyle" right now, but instead I am always working on something from home/car maintenance, yard work, etc...

I guess one of my big questions is whether a guy with bilge water for blood is the the type of guy that we would be interested in spending all day with, every day for a year.

I also have no idea what to expect to have to pay someone like that.

Yes, but as we will essentially always be traveling to different places, wouldn't that mean hiring a single captain to take the entire journey?

Also, I've looked at 55' vessels and they just seem very cramped for what we are looking for. I could be wrong though. We spend a couple weeks a year on a houseboat that size and it is much too cramped to live aboard for a year.

For a trip like this, what would you suggest as absolutely required systems?

You mentioned twin gensets. What about;
-fresh water maker
-navigation
-engines
-tender

I'm very unfamiliar with the professional yachting world. So your advise to talk to crew agents is good. I recently had dinner with several people in the Caribbean who were on vacation from their jobs as yacht crew members. Two of them on a 85' and four of them on a 150'. They were nice to hang out with but I couldn't be with them for long periods. I guess the take away from this is that I'd have to be just as picky about picking crew as I would be about choosing a vessel.

Why don't I ever hear much about solar systems on these yachts? I mean, a 1kW solar system doesn't take much room. That's only 4 panels and could be installed above the flybridge. You're only talking about $3-4,000 installed with a good size battery rack.

They make no noise and have a 20-25 year warranty. Modern systems work in tandem with generators really well. Gens only come on when panels can't keep battery charge above a certain level. Should pay for itself in less than 2 years on these larger boats.